


my heart's on the (drum)line

by magicites



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Marching Band, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Multi, No Angst, Vanitas is bad at feelings and overly dramatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 13:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19377661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicites/pseuds/magicites
Summary: “There’s a new trumpet player,” Vanitas says during lunch.“Yeah?” Naminé asks, not bothering to look up from her flute as she polishes the silver metal.“I hate him,” Vanitas says.“Uh-huh.”“I have no choice. I have to kill him.”“That’s what you said about the last three guys you liked,” she says, glancing up at him as she holds her flute up. “Does this look like a scratch to you?”





	my heart's on the (drum)line

**Author's Note:**

> i got angry building furniture one day and wanted to write something fun and goofy to calm down, so i wrote this and it quickly spiraled out of control. 
> 
> this is a HUGE departure from my typical writing style, and also a huge departure from my vanitas characterization in other fics. so, uh. if you're expecting thoughtful commentary all there is to find here are anime jokes.

Vanitas just wanted to play the drums. Didn’t matter what type of drum, as long as it was loud and annoying and his entire job was to hit it as hard as possible.

But _no_ , sixth grade orchestra didn’t need another drummer. They already had three. His stupid cousin was able to play the stupid trombone he always wanted because the only other trombone was an eighth grader who would eventually need a replacement.

Sora, that lucky idiot.

Vanitas had two choices: he could either lug around a cello and forgo marching band when high school finally reared its ugly head and sank its claws into him, or he could play flute. Those were the only needs the orchestra really had.

At least the flute is easier to lug around.

* * *

Marching band is.

Well.

It’s whatever.

Their band isn’t big and it isn’t great. They’re consistently mediocre in everything they do. That’s fine with Vanitas. Consistently mediocre means that his fifteenth birthday present to himself is a promise to never practice at home again. It also means that only his aunt and Sora will ever notice.

The band is small enough for Vanitas to know everyone’s name if he was annoyingly friendly. Sora knows everyone’s name, instrument, and favorite Skittle flavor, two of which are pieces of information that are completely useless. Everyone knows who Vanitas is referring to if he says _the short brunette clarinet player_ or _the low brass section leader who wears that stupid leopard necklace every day_ , so why bother learning names? 

This also extends to his section. His first year, there are five other flute players in his section. He only bothers to learn two of their names. He knows Invi, because she’s his section leader and also because she threatened to tell the band director he was being disrespectful to her if he called her _creepy snake girl_ one more time. He also knows Naminé, because she’s the only other flute that doesn’t make him want to claw his ears off.

She’s also his friend. Or, like. Someone could call her that and he wouldn’t protest.

His second year, there are four other flute players in his section. Two seniors graduated and only one kid crawled out of the middle school band bog to join them. He doesn’t bother to learn that kid’s name, either.

For the most part, he ignores the freshmen. They’re loud and dumb. The only time he pays attention to them is when he threatens to lock them inside their lockers if they don’t get out of his way. 

There’s a new sophomore, though. Vanitas overhears him introducing himself to his section leader, year and all. 

That’s different.

* * *

Every year opens with band camp, also known as the seventh circle of hell. 

Camp is a misnomer. He’d prefer camping, mosquitos and shitty tents and all, to being locked on the football field at school for eight hours a day. Every minute makes him feel like he’s on the edge of melting into a puddle of sweat and derision. 

For the most part, the first three days are lost in a blur. Vanitas spends every single moment violently ricocheting between sweaty, hot, and murderous. He nearly tackles a saxophone player for stepping out of formation and directly onto his toes. He’s only stopped by Naminé’s death glare, shot at him at the very last second.

“If you hurt Riku, I’ll never let you copy my math notes when you fall asleep in class ever again,” she says gently.

He doesn’t shove Riku away, but he makes a point of immediately forgetting his name once more. Instead, he watches the _silver-haired moody bastard_ (which is a much better name, anyways) slink back off to Sora. 

The fourth day changes things.

After a morning spent running the same drill over and over (how is marching from a series of straight lines into a V _so fucking difficult),_ Vanitas almost tramples Roxas, the snare drummer (and Vanitas only knows that because he needed a name to stew in jealousy towards) in his rush to get to the water cooler first. The band’s booster club, helmed by Vanitas’s aunt, makes sure to bring ice cold water and Cheez-Its for the kids to tear apart like a pack of rabid dogs. 

The new trumpet player gets there before Vanitas. He grins and chats with Vanitas’s aunt, trading Sora’s name back and forth with ease. It’s not a surprise that the pipsqueak already befriended the new meat, even if they’re not in the same section. Hell, knowing Sora, he probably befriended the new trumpet after hitting him in the head with his trombone slide.

The new kid fills his bottle with water, painfully oblivious to the daggers being glared into the back of his neck. His hair is slicked down against said back of said neck, fluffy blonde rendered dark by sweat. He takes a long drink from his bottle, stares at it for a moment, then dumps the rest of it over his head.

Vanitas watches in befuddlement, then in something else entirely, as the new trumpet player strips his now-soaked shirt off. 

A realization settles deep within Vanitas at that moment.

He has never hated anymore more than he hates this guy.

* * *

“There’s a new trumpet player,” Vanitas says during lunch, spit out around a mouthful of ham sandwich that his aunt packed him. Somewhere on the other end of the band room is Sora, eating the same damn thing and trying in vain to trade a bag of Cheetos for Kairi’s Oreos. Vanitas only knows this because it happened every single day during band camp last year and the first three days of this year were no different.

“Yeah?” Naminé asks, not bothering to look up from her flute as she polishes the silver metal. She likes to make it shine in the sunlight. Blind all the people who are mean to her.

“I hate him,” Vanitas says.

“Uh-huh.”

“I have no choice. I have to kill him.”

“That’s what you said about the last three guys you liked,” she says, glancing up at him as she holds her flute up. “Does this look like a scratch to you?”

Great.

Now he has to kill her, too.

The traitor.

* * *

Vanitas and Naminé have a post-band camp ritual. The moment it ends, they shove their flutes back into their lockers, hop on their bikes, and race down the half-mile of pothole-riddled road to the closest 7-11. Naminé gets a cherry icee and a bag of Skittles for the next day’s lunch, Vanitas gets a Coke icee, then they walk to the Ross across the street and sit on pillows that are embroidered with misspelled Bible verses in the home improvement section until they finish their drinks.

They still go, even as Vanitas plots how he’s going to do Naminé in. She just nods along, offering suggestions of her own.

“You should have poisoned the icee when I wasn’t looking,” she says, taking a loud sip of said icee. “That would have shown me.”

“It would have,” Vanitas agrees. “Maybe I’ll steal your markers and make you inhale the fumes all at once.”

“Lock me in a room with a drying painting of mine,” Naminé says. “Poetic justice.”

“Now I have to figure out how to kill the trumpet player,” Vanitas says. “Maybe I’ll drown him.”

“Sure you will.”

“In Gatorade.”

“Before or after asking him out?”

Vanitas jumps to his feet, grabs a gray pillow advertising that _A good hart is a Godly hart,_ and chucks it at her face. She bats it away, giggling.

* * *

When Vanitas gets home, the trumpet player is there. 

At the kitchen counter.

In _Vanitas’s_ seat.

Vanitas nearly walks out the open front door and into traffic, but he’s stopped by the trumpet player’s voice. 

It’s just as annoying as the rest of him. Too bright. Too happy. Too warm. 

Too capable of giving Vanitas weird heartburn.

“Hey, you’re the flute guy, aren’t you!”

The flute guy.

Definition: the lone guy in the flute section. In some circles, known instead as Vanitas.

Vanitas stares at him. His eyes are bright blue, made brighter with amusement. Vanitas wants to punch him for having the gall to have eyes that bright, and then punch himself for noticing that. “No. Where’s my cousin?”

“No way, you totally are! Sora said you are. He’s in the bathroom, by the way. Your aunt just left to go get groceries.”

So he’s staying for dinner, then. Guess Vanitas is starving tonight.

Vanitas doesn’t bother with a reply, instead dwelling in the fantasy of what it would be like to punch this guy in the face. The mouth, maybe. So he can finally shut up. 

He stares resolutely at his feet, black Converse covered in mud and grass stains from constant band camp abuse, as he heads towards the stairs.

He bumps into something warm and solid. Suddenly, he looks up, ready to suplex Sora for being a moron. 

Nope. No Sora.

Just the trumpet player, staring at him oddly. 

His eyes are even bluer up close.

He cannot be allowed to keep living.

“I’m Ventus, but everyone just calls me Ven. What’s your name?”

Vanitas thinks about going back to the sink to drown himself. He tries to respond with something dour, but the sound that actually comes out of his mouth is something closer to a dying skunk than a clever retort.

Trumpet player - no, Ven? 

No.

Ventus.

Less personal that way.

The trumpet player also known as Ventus laughs. “You need some water?”

“Oh, hey!” a voice calls out. The voice of an angel, his savior, his cousin bounding into the kitchen fina-fucking-ly. “Vanitas, you’re home!”

Vanitas quits his dying skunk impression to snap at his dumb cousin. “I always get home at this time, you moron. Did you think that would change?”

“I guess not!” Sora replies cheerfully. “Hey, wanna hang out with me and Ven? We can play flag football!” Which is the most awful suggestion Vanitas has ever heard after a day of intense marching and sweating, but leave it to Sora to never feel tired.

Also, Vanitas hates football.

“We already have to be around football so much,” Ventus says, scratching the back of his fluffy hair as he chuckles awkwardly. “I’d rather not.”

Vanitas doesn’t kill Ventus in that moment, but only because he got Vanitas out of playing sports.

They play video games instead.

Ventus’s laugh is the worst thing he’s ever heard. In his life.

* * *

“Morning, Vanitas!” Ventus says the next morning, leaning on some stupid clarinet’s locker as Vanitas breaks his flute out of band jail. “How are you?”

Vanitas can see Naminé just behind Ventus, watching them both with a knowing look. He flips her off when Ventus looks away to wave at the drum majors.

(Aqua and Terra. He knows their names, because he absolutely has to. Not because he had a crush on both of them last year. Naminé is a liar and should be outed as such.)

“Don’t you have a trumpet to get?” Vanitas asks, shoving his folder of music under his arm.

“I got time, don’t worry. The director isn’t even here yet!” Ventus replies easily. He trails after Vanitas like a lost puppy as he grabs a music stand off the rack. There isn’t enough for everyone. He always shares with Naminé.

“Clock’s ticking, Ventus. It’d look bad for the new guy not to have his shit together, wouldn’t it?”

Vanitas is enough of an idiot to steal a look at Ventus out of the corner of his eye. He’s caught in place by a sly grin. 

“I’m the new guy. Nobody expects me to know anything. I’ll mess around while I can.”

What the fuck.

Vanitas hates him so much.

* * *

“I’ll have Sora invite Ventus over for a sleepover. Then, when they’re asleep, I’ll sneak into Sora’s room and smother Ventus in his sleep. Make it look like an accident,” Vanitas explains, using an apple slice to better illustrate his point.

“If you sleep in the room with them, then you won’t have to sneak in,” Naminé points out. She’s abandoned flute polishing this lunchtime in favor of eating all the green Skittles out of the bag in her hand first.

“Good point. I’ll get Sora to clean his room so I can sleep on the floor next to Ventus. Then when they’re both asleep, I’ll roll over and smother Ventus with my pillow.”

“Sure you will,” Naminé says. “When’s the sleepover?”

* * *

Vanitas survives the first week of band camp.

His weekend is delightfully Ventus-free. Sora invites Riku (Vanitas tried, but he couldn’t forget his name) and Kairi over for the weekend instead. The three of them spend all of Saturday and Sunday lounging in the living room or making a mess of the kitchen, but the batch of underbaked cookies they make is pretty good. 

Vanitas steals seven and eats all but two of them. He saves them both for Naminé.

He tells her that much through a hastily sent text, and her reply nearly causes him to chuck his phone out the bedroom window.

_One cookie for me, one for Ven. Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me. :)_

He saves half a cookie for Naminé. The half with fewer chocolate chips.

* * *

Monday rolls around. Week two of band camp begins with all the flare of a wet firework.

Which is to say, it’s the shittier of the two weeks. 

Ventus doesn’t loiter around Vanitas’s locker this morning. He stays on his half of the band room, instead choosing to loiter with the other brass players. 

Everyone knows the rules. Woodwinds stay on their half of the band room with their lockers, and brass players stay on the other. Drumline and pit stay in the back, while Terra and Aqua stay in the front with the band director.

Naminé gently taps Vanitas’s shoulder. “If you keep staring this much, Ven’s bound to notice.”

"What the fuck? I’m not staring,” Vanitas says, continuing to look in Ventus’s specific direction. 

Ventus starts chatting with Kairi and Lea, two other trumpets. Vanitas knows Kairi’s name because of Sora. He knows Lea’s name because Lea tried out for trumpet section leader last year and lost horribly to the giant bear of a senior. 

Vanitas likes asking Lea how it feels to fucking suck. He gets as red as his hair. It’s great.

Lea is also loud as shit. He’s impossible to ignore. “Hey Ven, think you got an admirer,” Lea says like the fucking loudmouth he is, pointing right at Vanitas.

Ventus laughs and waves.

Vanitas spins on his heel and slams his locker shut. He also slams Naminé’s shut. Just for posterity.

* * *

Vanitas falls off his bike on the way to school Tuesday morning. Sora nearly runs into a tree trying to get off his own bike to go check on Vanitas. 

Vanitas is back on his feet before Sora’s managed to clamber off his own bike. He checks his spokes and his wheels for any damage. Upon finding none, Vanitas then focuses his attention on the sharp throbbing in his ankle.

He tries to get back on his bike and immediately falls off. 

“I can’t march like this,” Vanitas groans, sitting on the hot asphalt and baking in his own despair. Sora frowns at him from above. 

“Want me to call Mom to take you home?” Sora asks, already pulling out his phone.

“Nah. I’ll just- I don’t know. Practice the music for once.” He still hasn’t memorized the third song of the set. He probably should.

They chain up Vanitas’s bike outside of the corner liquor store. Vanitas rides on the back of Sora’s bike for the rest of the way. He punches Sora twice for making dumb jokes about living out their anime lives, nearly sending them into another tree.

Both Terra and Aqua sigh like they’re sick of his shit (which they are) when they hear the news, but they let him stay inside for the day.

* * *

Everyone hates the pit during band camp. While everyone else suffers outside, the pit gets to stay indoors, freezing under air conditioning dropped two degrees too low and arguing over who gets to play the hi-hats. 

Vanitas drags himself out of a practice room after two hours of playing the same minute and a half’s worth of music over and over. He drops himself into a chair next to the only person in the whole pit whose name he knows. 

Xion is the queen of the pit. Some people call her section leader, and by some people, Vanitas means the band director and that one journalist who once wrote a shitty article for the school’s newspaper about the band last year. Everyone else respects her true title.

Vanitas only knows her name because he’s caught Naminé staring at her for the past _year_. 

(Roxas, too. Vanitas isn’t sure which one Naminé likes, between the two of them. Maybe both.)

Xion’s the kind of hard worker that makes you feel like shit for not putting in half as much effort as her at any given moment. Seeing her effortlessly direct the pit was entirely why he practiced for two hours and not the five minutes he originally intended.

But if they’re taking a break, then he can definitely take a break too.

“I saw that there’s a new sophomore,” Xion says. “Trumpet, right?”

“Yeah. I hate him.”

Xion hums as she digs into her backpack. “What do you hate about him?” she asks, handing him a bottle of Gatorade. 

“Where do I begin?”

“At the beginning, probably.”

Vanitas shoves Xion with the butt of the Gatorade bottle. This one is radioactive piss, also known as the only good flavor of Gatorade.

She laughs.

He ignores her.

“Well, he’s stupid. His hair is too fluffy. You haven’t seen the light of day in a week so you wouldn’t know, but it looks like gold in the sunlight. I hate it. His eyes are too blue. He’s too new to band to be that good at trumpet. He laughs too loudly.”

“He does laugh pretty loudly,” Xion confirms. Vanitas takes a swig of Gatorade.

“See! You’ve heard it.”

“What else?”

Vanitas thinks. He doesn’t have to think for long. “His jawline is too fucking soft.” Vanitas kind of wants to bite it. See if it really is that soft. “Everything about him is so _soft_.”

Well. That isn’t entirely true.

“Maybe not his chest and his stomach. I was too far away to tell. I’d have to touch it to find out.”

Xion laughs so hard Gatorade comes out her nose. Vanitas hits her with her own music folder and limps away, furious.

* * *

Vanitas’s aunt takes them home. No Ross and icees today.

_Them._ Definition: typically himself and Sora.

The definition today: himself, Sora, and Ventus.

“Yeah, it’s totally okay if you take a shower at our place! You can borrow my clothes,” Sora says to Ventus as they head inside. Vanitas makes a point to put ten feet of distance between himself and their dumb asses.

The back of Ventus’s head is so fluffy.

“Shoes off at the door, boys,” Vanitas’s aunt reminds them for Ventus’s sake. Three equally filthy pairs of sneakers find a home on the shoe rack. The moment Ventus’s socked feet are settled back on the floor, he challenges Sora to a race.

The two of them tear off like idiots up the staircase, shoving each other and laughing the whole way up.

“I hate them both so much I want to die,” Vanitas says to no one. 

His aunt happens to overhear him. “Go play with the dog, honey. You’ll feel better.”

He does play with the dog, but he doesn’t feel any better. At least he’s managed to relocate to the couch to binge-watch more anime and ice his ankle (finally, whoops) by the time Ventus trails down the staircase. “Vanitas?”

Vanitas twists around to look over the top of the couch and-

“-Why the _fuck_ aren’t you wearing a shirt?” 

Vanitas has never, and will never, _hate anyone else more._

When Ventus blushes, apparently he blushes with his entire fucking body. Even his chest is turning red. 

Vanitas hates the fact that he will never be able to forget that tidbit of information for the rest of his life.

“Sora’s shirts don’t fit me! He’s too small. You’re a bit bigger than him, so can I just… borrow a shirt or something? I’ll give it back to you by the time school starts, washed and everything.”

“Vanitas!” his aunt calls from her study. “Be a good host and get that poor boy a shirt!”

Groaning, Vanitas flings himself off the couch and drags himself to the staircase. He accidentally brushes against Ventus’s shoulder as he squeezes past the boy. Electricity zings through Vanitas’s body and he nearly vaults himself over the railing from the shock.

He doesn’t, though.

Instead he mumbles, “This way,” like a complete fucking idiot, and leads Ventus into his room.

“Whoa! These posters are so cool,” Ventus says, gesturing to a giant video game poster Vanitas got as a Christmas gift last year. “I love this game.”

“You and every other gamer on the planet.”

“We should play together sometime.”

Vanitas wants to shoot him a look, but if he does, he’ll never survive. He glares at his bedsheets instead. “It’s single-player.”

“So? We can take turns.”

Vanitas grabs the first t-shirt he finds and flings it at Ventus’s stupidly fluffy head. Ventus lets out a muffled, “Thanks, I guess,” as he peels it off his face and puts it on.

Now safe, Vanitas turns to look. He didn’t bother to see what shirt he pulled out. He immediately pales at the sight.

Oh _god_. 

It’s a simple, dark green t-shirt. There’s only one word on the front of it, in the same font as Harvard’s logo.

_Kale_.

* * *

“Are you becoming friends with Ven?” Sora asks the next morning, buzzing around Vanitas’s locker like an overgrown gnat. Vanitas swats him away, but the bastard doesn’t go anywhere.

“I don’t have friends,” Vanitas says.

“It’s true. He doesn’t,” Naminé adds, polishing her flute for the morning. The weather forecast said that it’d be sunny today, and also that the August summer would get so hot that they were all marked for death via heat exhaustion.

Sora pouts. “Yeah, right! I know you’re his friend, Naminé. You guys are always together! Unless…” Sora trails off, looking more thoughtful than he has any right to be.

“If you finish that thought, I _will_ slash your bike tires,” Vanitas replies. Sora quickly shuts up.

Whether Sora shuts up because of the threat or because of the addition of a fourth person to their tiny group is debatable. “Morning, guys! What are you threatening Sora over now, Vanitas?” Ventus asks.

“Sora is assuming the wrong thing again,” Naminé explains, turning to face Ventus. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Naminé. Vanitas’s associate.”

Associate. That’s a good word. Ventus laughs when he hears it, something cheerful and entirely too bright for both the early morning hour and the day of hell they’re about to suffer through.

It also makes Vanitas’s stomach swoop like it’s on a roller coaster and left Vanitas to babysit its stuff just outside. 

Basically, it’s the worst sound he’s ever heard. Worse than Kairi’s snores whenever she sleeps over. That’s a feat.

“Nice to meet you, Naminé. I’m Ventus, but everyone except Vanitas calls me Ven. I just moved here, so everything is pretty new to me.”

“This town is… nice,” Naminé says. That’s the polite word for _boring_. “I hope you like it here.”

“So far, so good. I’ve met some interesting people, at least,” Ventus says with a grin. His eyes dart briefly to Sora, who chuckles and smiles at the attention, before settling on Vanitas. 

Vanitas freezes, caught like a deer in headlights. He’s only saved by Aqua calling everyone to attention.

* * *

The news spreads like wildfire. The first football game of the season is the Friday after school starts.

And the marching band is performing the first two songs of their set.

“Change of plans, everyone!” Aqua calls from the tiny stage Terra’s set up for her during practices. His own stage is nothing but a stepstool, shoved off to the side for all the losers on the left side of the field to watch. “From here on out, we’re only focusing on the first two songs. We’ll finish setting the drills for the third song after the game. Let’s all do our best!”

“But first, lunch time!” Terra adds, stepping down from his dinky little stool.

Vanitas will gladly suck every second he can out of lunch break. Terra and Aqua are going to work them all to death the moment break ends, so he’s going to enjoy the last good moments of his life as much as possible.

He and Naminé park themselves under the shade of a large tree just outside the band room. The grass is blissfully cool to sit on.

Xion and Roxas walk by, laughing to each other. There’s a popsicle in each of their hands, light blue and looking like nirvana itself in the summer sun.

Vanitas stares at the popsicles. 

Naminé stares at the people.

“If you distract them, I’ll grab the popsicles,” Vanitas says.

Naminé shakes her head. “I can never talk to them. I’ll die.”

“You would.” Then he’d have no one to eat lunch with and that would suck. 

Xion notices them watching and looks over. With a tiny smile, she waves at them both. She elbows Roxas, who offers a much more confused wave. 

Vanitas raises a hand in greeting.

Naminé attempts to drown herself in her carton of apple juice.

* * *

Sora and Ventus march right next to each other for the entirety of the second song. There’s still drills to set for the last ten or so measures of the song, so the two of them spend all the time the drum majors waste yelling at the clarinets and the drumline to get their shit together yapping at each other.

Sometimes they glance over to Vanitas for no reason. He catches them in the act twice.

_I’ll kill you_ , Vanitas mouths to Ventus when he catches him watching for the third time. Ventus laughs - at least, it looks like it - before turning back to Sora.

Naminé sits on the ground two feet away, perfectly in place for her spot in the drill. 

She’s on her phone again. 

She’s scrolling through food-themed Instagram accounts. 

Again. 

She doesn’t look up from her phone when she speaks. “Do you wish you were over there with them?”

“Do you wish you were inside with Xion?” Vanitas snaps back, sneering.

“Yes,” Naminé says simply. “It’s cooler inside.”

Well, fuck. There went his awesome retort. Scowling, Vanitas drops to the ground and pulls out his phone to play Bejeweled.

* * *

By the end of the day, Vanitas is more sweat than human. His shirt is soaked all the way through. There’s even sweat in his _socks_. Ugh. Disgusting.

Ventus, head wet and fluffy hair weighed down from the sink water he just dunked his head under, bounds up to him. His shirt is different from the one he was just wearing. 

Oh god. He must have changed in the bathroom.

“Hey, Vanitas! Can I have your number?”

“I can’t count, sorry,” Vanitas replies, his brain having shorted out for just long enough to reply with the stupidest thing in existence. He looks over to see Roxas’s giant drum locker wide open and briefly considers locking himself inside and never coming out again.

“I- what? No. Your phone number. Can I, uh, have that,” Ventus says, scratching the back of his head. His fingers run through his hair so easily. 

Would Vanitas’s fingers run through that smoothly if he tried the same?

Vanitas replies with his best impression of a dying skunk. 

Naminé materializes from abso-fucking-lutely nowhere, smiling pleasantly at Ventus. “I think Vanitas is really tired. The flutes got yelled at a lot today.” Which is true. They did. After the shit their dumbass section pulled, Aqua will probably have flute-themed nightmares tonight. “Here, I’ll give you his number.”

“Oh, okay,” Ventus says. He’s confused, but not confused enough to not bring his phone out of his pocket. 

Naminé gives him Vanitas’s number, then her own afterwards. As Vanitas continues to be a dying skunk, Naminé uses up all of her social energy for the next five years to ask a question. “Ven? Are you… related to Roxas, by any chance? You look similar.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too. Kind of weird, right? I have no idea why. Maybe this haircut is more popular than I thought it was?” Ventus says, tugging on the giant fucking spike on his head. Or, well. It used to be a spike. It’s floppy from the water now.

Vanitas still thinks about running his hands through it.

He locks his locker the wrong way, shoves his phone into his mouth instead of the granola bar next to it within his pocket, and tears Sora away from making eyes at Riku and Kairi so they can fucking go home already.

* * *

The last day of band camp is always the worst. With school lurking around the corner and practice cut from eight grueling hours to a measly three hours three times a week, the drum majors are hellbent on squeezing every minute of productivity they can out of the day.

Also, it’s hot. As fuck. Vanitas could fry an egg on the basketball court if he really wanted to. 

Naminé slathers herself in an entire tube’s worth of sunscreen. She reapplies it every single break they get and dabs the leftovers all over Vanitas’s face. He sputters at her to fuck off every single time, but his efforts are all for nothing.

Ventus, without fail, takes his shirt off during every single break and attempts to bathe in the water fountain.

“You shouldn’t be this red,” Naminé laments during one of said breaks. “This sunscreen is supposed to be SPF 100. How are you still burning?”

Ventus jogs over, his shirt nothing but a ring of fabric around the back of his neck. There are two half-frozen water bottles in his hands. He hands one to Naminé and offers the other to Vanitas. “The band boosters got us these. They’re so nice, I can barely believe it. I keep expecting them to yell at me for something I don’t know I’m doing wrong.”

Naminé takes the bottle with a smile and takes a drink. Vanitas can’t move, especially not when Ventus gets even closer and peers at him worriedly. His heart pounds from sheer anger. It’s ready to jump out of his chest, take a train cross-country, and start a new life in the fields of rural Idaho. Vanitas thinks about joining it. 

There’s no Ventus in Idaho. A blessing, really.

“You look really sunburnt,” Ventus says, glancing down at the bottle in his hand. Something occurs to him and he grins. “This will make you feel so much better,” Ventus says.

He presses the cold plastic against Vanitas’s neck, moving from the side up to his burning cheek. All Vanitas can do is stare, bewildered. Stupid traitor body.

“Oh,” Naminé says from beside him. “I get it now.”

“Get what?” Ventus asks, switching the bottle over to Vanitas’s other cheek. He laughs at whatever idiotic expression Vanitas must be making. 

“It’s nothing, don’t worry.”

* * *

“I’m going to ask him to go for a bike ride with me. But I won’t let him bring a bike even if he has one. I won’t let him borrow Sora’s, either. He’ll sit on the back of my seat and I’ll bike directly into Main Street during rush hour, then at the last moment, I’ll jump off my bike and leave him to get hit by a truck. It’s foolproof,” Vanitas says during lunch. He’s too worked up to eat his sandwich.

“What if he realizes what you’re doing early and stops you?”

“He’s stupid. He won’t.”

“What if he thinks it’s a date?” Naminé then asks, popping a green Skittle into her mouth. She leaves all the red ones on Vanitas’s lunch bag. She thinks they taste funny, which is absolutely fucking wrong because red Skittles are the best flavor without a doubt.

“Why the fuck would he think it’s a date?”

Naminé shrugs. “It seems like a date thing to me.”

“Fine. I’ll get Sora to invite him over, then I’ll make him go on a bike ride with me when Sora gets distracted by a really interesting leaf outside.”

* * *

They run the second song eight times over the course of the afternoon. The pit even lugs their massive instruments out of the band room to join them. The rest of the band silently celebrates their shared demise underneath the burning sun. 

Aqua and Terra don’t take enough pity on the band to let them end early, but they don’t make them march off the football field and back to the band room. That feels like a blessing, at least for the first two minutes. 

Kairi has broken rank from the trumpet hive mind to harass Naminé, leaving Vanitas to drag himself back relatively alone. It’s fine. He’s a big kid. 

The two minutes of blessing are the two minutes that Vanitas walks alone. It’s ruined when Ventus jogs to his side. At least he’s fully clothed this time. Shirt, shorts, socks, shoes, trumpet swinging in his hand like he’s gonna chuck it at someone. Everything’s in place.

Vanitas still kind of wants to kill him, though. Maybe headbutt him first. 

Bite his stupidly soft-looking jawline and shove him off the highest bleacher in the football stadium.

“Feels good to finally be done!” Ventus says, stretching his arms over his head with a contented sigh. Vanitas hears no fewer than three of his joints crack back into place. Disgusting.

Scowling, Vanitas jerks his knee until it pops with an even louder crack. Ventus laughs at the sound. “That’s gross,” he says.

“You’re gross,” Vanitas says back.

“You’re not wrong. I get sweaty easily. Can’t wait to take a shower when I get home.”

There are two bathrooms in Vanitas’s house, each fully equipped with a working shower, but Vanitas would rather eat fire ants right off the ground than intrude on his aunt’s shower. He’ll take fighting Sora for first dibs any day.

“Same.”

They fall into a silence that lasts a grand total of five seconds. That must be a new record for Ventus. “Can I… ask you something?” Ventus asks, suddenly apprehensive.

“No.”

“Oh.” Ventus visibly deflates. Like a sad fucking balloon or something. As Vanitas quickly learns, the only thing worse than a shirtless Ventus is a _disappointed_ Ventus. 

Vanitas puts off killing him for another twenty seconds. He’ll get Ventus to stop looking like someone drowned his goldfish, and _then_ Vanitas will ask for his address and ship him a letter full of live scorpions. “Whatever. Just ask me the fucking question.”

Ventus perks up, the disappointment fleeing with his suddenly reddened face. Vanitas doesn’t like where this is going. At all. 

“Uh,” Ventus coughs awkwardly and entirely on purpose, “Are you, uh, seeing anyone right now?” he squeaks out, followed immediately by a, “Sorry.”

Vanitas frowns down at his shoes. “Seeing anyone? I _see_ all of the idiots in front of us, if that’s what you mean.”

Ventus turns even redder. “N-no, not that!” He runs a hand down his face. “Like. Are you _dating_ anyone. Romantically.”

“This is a joke, right? How much did Sora pay you to put you up to this?”

Ventus attempts to retract within the neck of his sweaty t-shirt like some kind of turtle. He fails. “H-he didn’t!” The next thing he says is muttered under his breath, so quietly that it’s a miracle that Vanitas catches it. “He wouldn’t tell me when I asked…”

Sighing, Vanitas takes pity on him. This Ventus is almost as bad as a disappointed Ventus. “I’ve been single for the past fifteen years.” He pauses. “I’m fifteen, by the way.”

“Me too,” Ventus says, slowly retracting out of his t-shirt shell. “Uh, on both counts.”

“Why do you care?”

“Just curious, that’s all!” Ventus says quickly. Far too quickly.

* * *

“We have to speed up our plans. Ventus is plotting something. We have to strike first before he does,” Vanitas says, using his icee to gesture wildly. The pillow he’s sitting on today in this Ross doesn’t have a Bible verse on it, but a watercolor giraffe. It’s seven bucks. Sora would go nuts over it.

Luckily enough, Vanitas has eight bucks in his pocket.

Naminé takes a particularly loud sip of her icee. “What did he say today? I couldn’t hear over Kairi trying to get me to go karaoke with her.” She grabs another pillow - a purple one with a crooked _Nine o’clock is WINE o’clock!_ embroidered on the front - and adds it to her pillow pile. 

Vanitas leans in closer like he’s sharing top-secret government information. He glares at the security camera before speaking. “He asked me if I was _single_.”

Naminé takes a very, very loud sip of her drink. “Hmmm… what did you tell him?”

“The truth? What else would I tell him?”

“And did he say anything else?”

“That he was also single. And fifteen.”

“I’d hope he was fifteen,” Naminé says, stirring her drink with her straw. It must be mostly melted by this point. They’ve been here a while.

“He’s still plotting something. Why else would he ask me? He’s trying to get dirt on me so he can torture me before doing me in.”

“Maybe he’ll have Sora invite him over, then lock you in your room with him. When he’s shirtless,” Naminé adds. “That would do you in.”

Vanitas jerks back so violently that his head collides with the metal rack behind him. He swears loudly and rubs the sore spot. That’s going to bruise. Badly. 

* * *

Vanitas wakes up Saturday morning to one text. Considering Naminé doesn’t acknowledge reality before noon on the weekends, it can’t be from her.

Nope. It’s from Ventus.

And all it says is _hey_. 

No period.

Just.

_hey_

Vanitas stares at the message for so long that it stops looking like a word. At that point, he screenshots it, sends it to Naminé to demand advice moving forward, and drags himself downstairs for breakfast.

There’s already a plate of pancakes waiting for him. Sora’s already halfway through his, tearing into them like he’s a starving dog. Vanitas snatches up the spoon meant for Sora’s grapefruit and cuts off an edge of his pancake just to annoy him.

Sora is too busy eating to notice. Dammit. 

“You look upset,” Vanitas’s aunt comments as he drops into his seat. She’s most of the way through her own grapefruit. “What happened now?”

“People don’t know how to text,” Vanitas grumbles.

“Are you talkin’ ‘bout Ven?” Sora asks around a mouthful of syrupy pancake. 

“Yeah.”

Sora swallows. Then he laughs. “He’s hard to text. I like hanging out with him in person more.”

Naminé texts him back at one in the afternoon. Her advice is simple. _Say hey back._

So Vanitas does.

The reply comes instantly.

_how r u_

Rather than wait on Naminé, Vanitas barges into Sora’s room instead. He drops down on Sora’s bed, interrupting his marathon of _Queer Eye_ for the third time since the second season came out. Vanitas shoves his phone in Sora’s face. “How do I reply.”

Sora shoots him a confused look. “By telling him how you are…?”

Vanitas blinks.

He takes his phone back and sends a reply.

_Fine._

Again, the reply is instantaneous.

_cool!_

Vanitas snatches one of the pillows Sora is currently using as a backrest, ignoring his protests, and screams into it.

* * *

Vanitas would rather text a corpse than Ventus. At least a corpse knows when to end a conversation.

They text all weekend long. 

Vanitas spends all of Sunday afternoon grocery shopping with his aunt. He’s on his phone so much that it dies.

His aunt refuses to let him use her portable charger.

* * *

The school year starts.

Just like last year, Naminé shares all but one class with Vanitas. She’s in art. He’s in weights.

The only class Ventus shares with Vanitas is band. As it turns out, not only is Ventus a dumbass, he’s also bad at school.

“Advanced classes are boring,” Ventus says during band on the first day. “The teachers talk too much. I always fall asleep.”

“Normal classes are boring. Too little to do,” Vanitas shoots back as he tunes his flute. He and Naminé share a tuning app on her phone. Her password is _pencil_. He plays an A and glances at the tuner. Still a little too sharp.

“You’re a nerd, did you know that?” Ventus asks, laughing. 

“No shit, Ventus. I wouldn’t lug around three textbooks every day if I wasn’t.” At least his shoulders and back are pretty strong from all that lugging. No wonder Ventus is such a twig. 

“How do you do carry all that crap, Naminé?” Ventus asks, turning to her. She’s polishing her flute again.

“Sheer willpower,” Naminé replies. “Also, I make Vanitas carry my books for me.”

Ventus turns thoughtful, which is an awful sign. “How much _can_ you carry?” Ventus asks, turning to face Vanitas. The expression Ventus shifts to is definitely in the top three for worst Ventus expressions, like Vanitas is a puzzle he’s too stupid to solve. 

“I bet Vanitas could carry you, Ven,” Naminé says. Vanitas throws her phone at her head. Her reflexes are too quick. She manages to catch it. 

Dammit.

Ventus laughs. “No way! I’m heavier than I look.”

Naminé starts - loudly - tuning her own flute, making a giant fuss out of screwing the head out and intentionally making the next note she plays overly flat. She’s doing it all on purpose, but Ventus doesn’t know her well enough to know that. She’s just using it as an excuse to exit the conversation.

He really has no choice but to kill her at this point.

“Vanitas? You okay?” Ventus asks, pulling him out of his thoughts of murder. “Are you still sunburnt? You look red.”

“I hate you,” Vanitas says.

“Somehow I doubt that.”

* * *

"I hate him,” Vanitas says during lunch. Between himself and Naminé, they’ve claimed five different chairs in the band room and three music stands for their combined shit. 

Most people don’t eat lunch in the band room. The current inhabitants include:

Himself and Naminé;

Sora, Riku, and Kairi, who are currently engaged in a milk-chugging contest;

Terra and Aqua, who are engaging in their usual routine of Terra failing to convince Aqua to stop doing band work in the office when they’re supposed to eat;

Xion, Roxas, Lea, and Isa (the section leader of the saxophones, whose name Vanitas knows because Lea shouts it _every fucking day_ ), who are all eating lunch in the back as Xion stands guard over her xylophone to prevent idiot freshmen from using it as a table;

And the idiot freshmen who are trying to use the xylophone as a table. 

No Ventus.

Thank fuck. 

Naminé doesn’t need to ask who Vanitas hates. She already knows. “I know,” she says.

“I’ve never hated anyone more.”

“More than Terra and Aqua last year?”

“Way more.”

Naminé hums. “That’s a lot of hate.”

“I’m going to punch him in the face today during practice. I’ve already decided.”

“Have you now,” Naminé says, completely unconvinced.

“I am!”

“With your mouth?”

Vanitas scowls at her. This is war.

“Hey, Xion! Roxas!” Vanitas shouts, waiting for two pairs of equally confused blue eyes - one a stormy blue, the other a shade bordering on violet - to look at him. “Come here!”

It takes them a minute to work their way through the maze of pit instruments, but they do. “Yes?” Xion asks.

“Naminé has a question for you both,” Vanitas says, pointing to the girl who is shrinking in her chair. 

“What’s up?” Roxas asks, turning to face her. Xion turns as well. From behind them, Vanitas offers Naminé his most evil grin.

Now she has to say something, or risk looking like an idiot in front of both of them. Naminé squeaks at first, her own eyes pale, wide, and terrified. 

Vanitas keeps grinning. 

“How… do you like pit? And drumline?” Naminé asks awkwardly.

“It’s really fun!” Xion and Roxas say at the same time. They glance at each other and burst out laughing.

Naminé’s whole face turns red. She lets out a tiny whimper.

* * *

“I’m not forgiving you,” Naminé says as she and Vanitas walk to math class together.

“You got both their numbers out of that. You should be thanking me.”

* * *

During marching season - also known as the first semester of the school year - the band practices after school three days a week. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. If there’s a home football game that week, then they’re expected to come early to meet their call time and prepare.

If there’s a competition, which all start two months from now, then there goes Vanitas’s Saturday.

“I’ve sold my soul to band,” Vanitas says as he slams his locket shut, a wad of clothes for practice in his hands. He’d rather die than march in black skinny jeans for three hours straight.

“I think we all have,” Naminé says, his previous sin forgiven once he offered to buy her an icee after practice.

Like every other sensible band kid, he goes to the bathroom to change. The bathroom is full of guys, seniors who bullied their way into claiming a stall to change in and freshmen whose shirts get caught on their oversized glasses as they try to change.

And Ventus.

“Hey, Vanitas! There’s a spot over here,” Ventus says, gesturing to an open patch of counter directly next to him. He’s lacing his shoes up, having already changed.

That’s the only reason why Vanitas doesn’t immediately leave.

He tries to wait for Ventus to leave before changing, but the idiot is determined to chat with him about his day. Feeling the minutes slip by before Terra barges in here and physically drags him out, clothed or not, Vanitas grits his teeth and pulls his own shirt off. 

His vision is obscured by red as the fabric slips over his face as he snatches his practice shirt - a light gray t-shirt with a hauntingly photorealistic walrus on it that Sora bought him as a joke - off the counter. 

There’s a split second where he could swear Ventus was staring at him.

“What, do I have something on my face?” Vanitas snaps as he tugs his shirt down.

Ventus turns red and turns away, stammering. “N-no!” Vanitas takes the opportunity to change into his trusty pair of basketball shorts. “I-I just remembered that I still have your kale shirt.”

He was supposed to have returned it already.

“I hate it. Keep it.”

Ventus spins around, even redder than before. “Wait, what!?”

“Did I stutter, or are you just deaf?”

“I- uh- okay. I’ll… I’ll keep it.”

* * *

“I accidentally gave Ventus my kale shirt,” Vanitas tells Naminé in-between re-setting a drill for the first song of their set. Once again, the clarinets cannot get their shit together long enough to march in a straight fucking line.

“Really? I liked that shirt,” Naminé says.

“If you want it, go fight Ventus for it.”

“I don’t think he’d let me have it even if I won.”

Vanitas chokes on his own tongue. 

* * *

Naminé comes over for dinner and to do homework together with Vanitas after practice. She always comes over on Mondays. It’s tradition.

Sora won’t stop eyeing her at the dinner table. “You’re texting under the table, aren’t you?” he asks, surprisingly sharp for once.

Naminé squeaks and shifts, clearly shoving her phone back into the pocket of her jeans. “Sorry.”

Sora grins. “It’s fine. Who are ya texting?”

Naminé pokes at her rice with her chopsticks. “...Xion.”

“Nice!” Sora says. He snickers to himself and glances at Vanitas. “Are you texting anyone, Vanitas? Anyone blonde, maybe?”

“No.”

“Darn.”

“No texting at the table, boys,” Vanitas’s aunt reminds them. “Only Naminé can. Guests can do whatever they like to make themselves feel more at home.”

“Thank you, Ms. Sora’s Mom,” Naminé says. Vanitas knows she knows her name. She just doesn’t use it.

“Anytime, sweetheart,” she says back.

* * *

They spend all of band class and half of band practice getting fitted for their marching uniforms. The uniforms are mostly black, somewhat red, and entirely made of wool. It’s a recipe for disaster in the late summer. Vanitas has seen more than one tuba collapse from heat exhaustion after competitions.

“Vanitas, look at my cape!” Ventus says, in full uniform. Black pants, red coat, black and red cape slung over his shoulder and tied in place by silver ropes. He swishes it with his hand. “Isn’t it so cool?”

Vanitas thinks about strangling Ventus with that dumb cape, and then himself. Anything to avoid this conversation. “You look stupid.”

Ventus sticks his tongue out. “Then come look stupid with me. You have to get fitted, too.”

Vanitas does.

They look so stupid together.

When Vanitas’s aunt, ever the loyal band booster, hands Ventus his helmet (black, with sky-high red plumage sticking out the top), Vanitas shoves it on his head as far as it’ll physically go.

It gets stuck.

Vanitas gets in trouble for _causing mayhem_. His aunt’s words. Not his.

* * *

Ventus shows up in the band room for lunch. He looks around like a lost puppy.

When he sees Vanitas, he lights up. Like he’s a faulty lamp or something.

Vanitas’s chest twists painfully and he coughs. That’s some weird heartburn.

“Hey!” Ventus says, jogging over to where he and Naminé sit. “Can I join you guys? Eating alone in the cafeteria kinda sucks.”

“Of course,” Naminé says at the same time that Vanitas goes, “No.” They turn and stare at each other blankly, neither one willing to back down.

Still making eye contact, Naminé grabs her backpack and slides it off the chair closest to her. “Here you go, Ven.”

Out of the corner of Vanitas’s eye, he can see Ventus’s grin. How are his teeth so white, what the fuck. “Thanks, Naminé!”

* * *

“What do you like to do for fun?” Ventus asks.

_Plot your murder_ isn’t a socially acceptable response. Vanitas goes with something that is. “Sleep.”

“Hey, me too! You also like video games, right?”

“...Yeah.”

“Do you like sports? Movies? Bowling?”

“I like…” Vanitas pauses, “anime.”

“No way! Me too!” Ventus jogs next to him as Vanitas walks out to the bike rack. “We should start one together!”

Vanitas wouldn’t admit it even at gunpoint, but Ventus’s enthusiasm is kind of… infectious. Maybe he’ll put off killing him until after they watch a show together.

“...Sure.”

* * *

Thursday rolls around.

“I’m putting off killing Ventus,” Vanitas announces during English class. 

The teacher gives him a panicked look.

Naminé, sitting to his right, hums. “What changed your mind?”

“Anime.”

Naminé nods. “Of course.”

* * *

Ventus has taken to joining Naminé and Vanitas for lunch. On Friday, Xion and Roxas drag Naminé, rendered a squeaking mess, away during lunch to teach her how to play xylophone.

Leaving Vanitas relatively alone with an eerily silent Ventus.

It’s the worst lunch he’s ever had.

Their call time on Friday is five PM. That gives Vanitas just enough time to bike home, take a nap, eat dinner, then have Vanitas’s aunt take him and Sora back to school. She’s staying to help pass out hats before the game and lemonade during the game.

“I’ll see you tonight, right?” is the first thing Ventus says to him all day, right as the bell signaling the end of lunch rings.

“What, you think I can skip out on the first game of the year when my legal guardian is the booster club president? You really are dumber than I thought.”

“Jeez, sorry!” Ventus says, glaring down at Vanitas’s dirty shoes. “I’ll be there, too. We can hang out during break…” Ventus trails off, realizing something. “Wait, do we get a break?”

“Third quarter. After the halftime show.” The one that they’re going to completely fuck up because they haven’t practiced the drills enough.

“Cool,” Ventus says. “I’ll come find you then.”

“Cool.”

Vanitas wants to slam his head into his locker.

* * *

“I heard you’re gonna hang out with Ven during our break,” Sora says from the backseat of his mom’s minivan.

“How do you know that?” Vanitas twists around in his seat - passenger, because he raced Sora and beat him to the car door - to regard him suspiciously.

Sora pouts down at his hands, his fingers poking together in his lap. “Because he made me promise not to go with you guys.”

Sora’s mom starts to laugh. Vanitas tries to kill her with his glare alone. It doesn’t work. 

“What’s that asshole planning?” Vanitas demands, twisting back to face Sora once the evil woman in the driver’s seat refuses to give in. Or stop laughing, for that matter.

“Language!” his aunt snaps.

“Sorry,” Vanitas murmurs.

“...You don’t have a clue, do you? And I thought _I_ was dense,” Sora says, igniting Vanitas’s fury once more.

“Vanitas, when two people-” Vanitas’s aunt begins, only to be cut off by Sora’s screeching.

_“-Mooooooom, noooo!”_

“Sora, he should probably kno-”

“No more, Mom! I can’t do this! I’ll die!”

Vanitas’s aunt heaves out a sigh. “Boys,” she says, shaking her head.

* * *

Ventus doesn’t come up to Vanitas, even when he shows up in the band room. Vanitas sticks with his section, muttering rude things under his breath to Naminé and getting scolded by Invi. Really, no different from every call time before games last year.

Well, there’s one difference.

The pair of blue eyes constantly on his back.

* * *

“Naminé!” Roxas calls out as she passes by the drumline. Most of the drummers are just shitting around, letting Roxas slip out of line with ease. His snare drum is a little loose in its harness, causing a hideous racket as he moves.

“Y-yes?” Naminé asks, freezing at Vanitas’s side. 

“Your cape is flipped wrong,” he explains, pointing to the cape hanging off her shoulder. The underside of the fabric is a vivid scarlet, but Naminé’s is flipped wrong. The cords pinning it in place are twisted all wrong, too.

“Oh!” Naminé gasps, looking at it. “I’ll need to fix it…”

Roxas grins. “I can fix it for you. Here, lemme just…” he takes a few steps back and shrugs off his drum. He’s not very careful when he places it on the ground.

Vanitas bets it’ll be broken before the end of the year.

Naminé blushes so hard the entire time Roxas fixes her cape and cords that it’s a wonder she doesn’t explode from the sheer amount of blood pressure that must be building in her face. She thanks him quietly when he steps away, satisfied with his work.

Roxas chuckles. “No worries. Good luck out there, okay? Once we’re done, let’s get some nachos! You, me, and Xion!”

“She’d love that,” Vanitas answers for her, knowing that she’s currently too braindead to answer herself. “We better get going before Invi makes us run laps for being late. Later.” He grabs Naminé’s arm and drags her away.

Invi makes Naminé do twenty push-ups for being too spaced out to follow her warmup directions. 

“It was completely worth it,” Naminé sighs a little later, once Invi is preoccupied with getting the freshman to stop sucking so much at playing high notes. 

* * *

The band marches onto the field, forming two parallel lines. They form a tunnel of instruments glittering under the stadium lights.

First come the cheerleaders, yelling out cheers over the sound of the school’s fight song and backflipping their way into a pyramid at the end. The football players follow them in a stampede of shoulder pads and testosterone.

The crowd watching them is huge and just as lively. They lose their mind as the quarterback runs past.

Vanitas plays his flute with ease, Naminé at his side.

* * *

With the opening ceremony done, the band filters into the section of the bleachers reserved specifically for them. Terra and Aqua take their places at the bottom, ready to conduct the band whenever they have to play a pep song to cheer on the football team. Vanitas’s aunt and her army of band boosters stand off to the side, armed and ready with cups of lemonade.

They’re required to sit by section. Vanitas takes a seat by Naminé, right on the edge of the bleachers. They’re tucked away in the front corner. The drumline - but not Roxas, because of course not - is in front of them, while every single fucking clarinet sits and chatters behind them.

“It’s gonna be a long game,” Vanitas says.

“Yeah,” Naminé agrees. “I heard our team sucks this year.”

* * *

Their team does suck this year.

By the end of the first quarter, the rival team is winning by ten points. Vanitas has as much school spirit as a piece of driftwood, but if there’s one thing he hates, it’s losing. To anyone. Or anything.

When Aqua calls them to attention for the next pep song, a jaunty tune whose entire purpose is to kick the football team’s ass into gear and stop sucking so much, Vanitas plays as loudly as he can.

* * *

“It’s time,” Naminé says, checking the strap tucked under her chin to make sure her hat won’t fall off. It happened to her last year. Vanitas didn’t let it go for six whole months. “Are you ready?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

They fall into the pack of band kids and line up on the edge of the field anyways. Terra and Aqua, clad in identical white tailcoats, exchange quiet words at the edge of the field. Aqua buries her face in Terra’s shoulder and her gives her a quick hug.

Whispers immediately burst across the band like wildfire. The rumor mill will have more than enough material to run for the next week.

“Attention!” Aqua calls out, snapping everyone to attention. Vanitas stands up straight, the fingertips of his left hand flicked at the edge of his stupid hat as he waits for further commands.

“That’s better,” Aqua says. “At ease.” 

Everyone goes back to slouching, Vanitas included.

“I won’t lie to you guys. You’re too smart for that. Going out there…” Aqua bites her lip. “It’s going to be tough. But we’ll get through it, and we’ll get better.”

“And when competition time comes around, we’ll be great!” Terra adds.

“Don’t think of this as an end. Think of it as our beginning,” Aqua finishes. “Ready?”

The band falls back into line.

“A-tten- _tion!”_

The band silently marches onto the field proper. The sun has gone down, leaving them illuminated solely by the blinding stadium lights.

Aqua and Terra get onto their stands - Aqua at the center, Terra off to the left - and look like divine beings in their pristine uniforms.

They shout, in unison.

The band shouts back.

And the show begins.

* * *

God, they fucking suck.

* * *

At least they make it through two songs with zero deaths and zero portions of the football field spontaneously bursting into flames.

Really, that’s the best they could hope for.

Exhausted, their halftime disaster over, the band crawls back into the stand. Jackets are stripped off, leaving everyone in whatever t-shirt they decided to wear under their jacket and wool overalls. Vanitas’s hair is fucked seven ways from Sunday, his spikes flattened by his dumb hat and now stuck to his forehead from sweat. He looks gross. He probably smells grosser.

Naminé’s bangs are also fucked, as revealed when she takes her hat off and carefully sets it on her feat. Her flute, gleaming under the stadium lights, is quick to follow. 

Xion, looking much less sweaty than every other member of the band, appears out of fucking nowhere. “Naminé!” she says happily, causing the girl in question to jump and squeak in shock. “Are you ready? There are nachos with our names on them!”

“Y-yeah,” Naminé says, grabbing her phone. “See you later, Vanitas?”

“Have fun,” Vanitas says. Naminé offers him a grateful smile and leaves, caught up in Xion’s chatter as they go to find Roxas.

Vanitas sits and waits for his own annoyance to come. 

* * *

“Are you sweaty or did you somehow dunk yourself in the lemonade vat?” Vanitas asks once Ventus appears from fucking nowhere. 

He’s wearing Vanitas’s kale shirt. 

Vanitas can’t stop staring. Huh. It’s like his neck muscles, and eye muscles, and face muscles, and everything else, stopped working. 

Ventus grins like he’s proud of himself. What the fuck. “I brought an extra water bottle to pour on myself. I feel great right now.”

Ventus’s smile falters a little. Vanitas has no idea why.

“Hot dog time?” Ventus offers weakly. 

“I don’t like hot dogs.”

“There are burgers, too.”

“...The burgers aren’t bad.”

“Cool,” Ventus says, nodding to himself. It’s a stupid answer, but Vanitas is still reeling from just how bad the halftime show was to call him out on that. Instead, he gets to his feet and falls into step at Ventus’s side.

That’s the stupid thing about band kids. They always walk in time when they’re together. Ventus and Vanitas are no exception.

“So, that halftime performance was…” Ventus begins, only to trail off.

“Fucking awful?” Vanitas finishes for him. “An embarrassment? The worst crime we’ve ever been complicit in?”

“I was going to say _bad_ , but yeah, kinda,” Ventus admits as they head up the bleachers. “Think we’ll get any better?”

“Yeah. Don’t get your hopes up for an underdog story, though. We’re not that kind of band.”

“Neither was my old band,” Ventus says with a shrug. “It’s fine. As long as I get to play, I’m happy.”

The concession booth is up the bleachers, down the side steps at the top of the stadium, and tucked away off to the side just outside the stadium. Ventus and Vanitas make the rest of the trip in a relative silence, at least between the two of them. Everyone around them continues to not shut the fuck up. 

Ventus seems nervous. He won’t meet Vanitas’s eyes, no matter how many ugly faces Vanitas makes to try to catch his gaze. All he does is watch Vanitas out the corner of his eye and smile to himself.

Annoying.

“What’s your deal?” Vanitas asks.

“Nothing,” Ventus says quickly. Too quickly. “Lemme buy you your burger.”

“Whatever.”

Ventus’s grin gets a little wider at what he knows is permission. Vanitas’s heartburn acts up at the sight. Stupid body.

* * *

They get their food. Ventus buys a hot dog and a root beer for himself, and a burger and Sprite for Vanitas. 

“No Coke?” Ventus jokes.

“My aunt banned me from caffeine until I’m sixteen.” She doesn’t need to know about the icees. They don’t count. Maybe.

“That sucks.”

Vanitas shrugs. “Wouldn’t be able to sleep anyways.” Not when it’s this late, at least. 

“I guess,” Ventus says, grabbing three packets of mayonnaise off the nearby condiment stand and shoving them all into his hot dog container. “Hey, let’s not go back to the bleachers yet.”

“Where the fuck are we supposed to eat, then?”

Ventus looks around. What constitutes a good eating place in Ventus’s mind, Vanitas has no idea. His eyes settle on a few trees sprouting out a patch of grass some distance away. “That looks good! How about there?”

“I don’t really care.”

“Great. Let’s go.”

They nestle down amongst the trees. It’s not far enough away from the field that they’ll get in trouble should Terra or Aqua find them, but it’s also not close enough to be distracted by random passerby. About as private as a football game can get, really. Outside of a bathroom stall, that is.

Ventus puts three packet’s worth of mayonnaise on his hotdog.

All Vanitas grabbed for his burger was a single packet of ketchup, _like a normal person._

It’s quiet again. The awkward kind of quiet.

“What’s gotten into you?” Vanitas asks.

Ventus blinks at him. His eyelashes are too long. It’s infuriating. “What?”

“You’ve been acting weird. Like you’re planning something.” 

Ventus takes a deep breath. He sets his hot dog down.

Vanitas is instantly on edge. 

“Honestly? I kinda have.”

Vanitas takes a bite of his burger. “Then spill it already.”

Ventus takes another deep breath as his face turns red, the color creeping down his neck and staining the tops of his ears. Vanitas hates the fact that he knows Ventus’s chest must be red, too. 

Vanitas waits.

And waits.

And waits some more.

Finally, Ventus speaks. “Ilikeyou.”

“What?” Vanitas didn’t catch that. He went too fast.

When Ventus repeats it, it’s to his hot dog. “I like you?” he asks, like he’s looking for confirmation from the hot dog and also maybe Vanitas.

“...Thanks?”

“No, not as a friend! Like. I _like_ -like you. Like. Really like you. Crush like you.”

“That’s a lot of likes, Ventus.”

Somehow, Ventus turns redder. He stops confessing to his hot dog so he can glare at Vanitas. “I take it back! You suck.”

All the air flees out of Vanitas’s chest. He feels like he’s been punched and he doesn’t know why. The heartburn feeling isn’t there anymore, replaced by an echoing emptiness. He hates it. “You take it back!”

“Take back what?”

“Your take back!”

Ventus groans, but somewhere along the way, it turns into a laugh. He starts guffawing, even. It’s that strong. “This is probably the worst confession ever.”

Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? A confession.

Vanitas sits with that information. He thinks back to what Naminé has said. What Sora said in the car today.

The eerie similarity between Ventus insistently inviting him out, _alone_ , and the nachos that Naminé must be sharing with two other people right now.

Oh.

_Oh._

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Ventus repeats. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

That’s something Vanitas has to actually consider. What _does_ it mean? So Ventus has a crush on him. 

What does Vanitas have? What does he think?

“Can I touch your jawline?” Vanitas blurts out.

Ventus makes a strangled sound. “You- what?”

“Your jawline. It looks soft. Can I touch it.”

“I-” Ventus cuts himself off with another strangled sound. It’s like his own dying skunk impression, except not really. More like a dying opossum. “Yes?” he squeaks out.

Vanitas takes another bite of his burger before setting it off to the side. He scoots closer to Ventus, close enough that he can feel body heat radiating off him. Determined, Vanitas places his hand on Ventus’s red face.

He traces Ventus's jawline. It’s soft. Not quite like his own. Different.

But soft all the same.

He still kind of wants to bite it. 

...Maybe later.

Ventus is close to hyperventilating. His eyes are too blue and too wide. “C-can I kiss you?” he asks quickly.

Vanitas considers that, too.

He shrugs. “Sure.”

“Just _sure?”_

Vanitas shrugs again. Ventus sighs, but he scoots a little until they’re sitting directly across from each other. Vanitas’s fingers are still on Ventus’s jawline.

Ventus covers Vanitas’s free hand with his own.

He closes the distance and presses their lips together. He tastes a little like cherry chapstick and mayonnaise. 

That’s weird.

But the feeling of soft lips against his own? That’s good. Really good.

* * *

They spend so much of the third quarter kissing that their food goes cold. 

They have to shove their drinks, still unopened, down their overalls and sneak back so Aqua and Terra won’t get on their case about having open drinks around instruments.

Ventus asks to hold Vanitas’s hand on the walk back to the bleachers. 

Vanitas lets him. It’s warm, if a little clammy.

* * *

“I can’t kill Ventus anymore,” Vanitas announces as he drops into his seat next to Naminé. She holds a bag of Skittles. She deposits a bunch of red ones into Vanitas’s open hand.

“Why not?”

“I can’t kiss him if he’s dead.”

“Well-” Naminé begins. Vanitas cuts her off instantly.

“-Don’t you dare fucking say whatever you were about to say.”

“Okay,” Naminé concedes. “So, you finally kissed him?”

“What do you mean, _finally?”_

“I knew he liked you since the first time I saw you two talk. It’s really obvious,” Naminé explains.

Vanitas pulls his Sprite out of his overalls and shoves her with the can. All she does is smile at him. “Like you’re any better?”

“I’m really not. At least I know it.”

Damn.

He can’t fight that.

* * *

They play some more pep songs and watch their football team lose horribly. 

At the end of it, while the band slinks back off to the band room in despair as the disappointed crowd leaves, Ventus finds Vanitas.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Ventus asks.

“Sleeping.”

“What are you doing once you’re done sleeping?”

“Nothing.”

“Wanna come over to my house and watch some anime?” 

Vanitas thinks back to what Naminé said earlier. “What, like a date?” he asks.

Ventus turns red. “If that’s okay?” he offers hesitantly.

“...Yeah,” Vanitas says. He shifts his flute into his other hand and takes Ventus’s hand in his. “That’s okay.”

Ventus pulls him closer. “Cool.”

* * *

Vanitas has to stay especially long so his aunt can catalog all the hats as they get put away. He finds Sora and collapses on the floor by his locker. His cousin looks down at him curiously, then shrugs and collapses next to him.

They sprawl out against the low brass lockers like a couple of morons.

“I heard you were holding hands with Ven,” Sora says. 

“Who told you that bullshit?”

“Kairi.”

“...Oh.” Kairi is relatively free of bullshit. 

Also, it’s true.

“...Yeah, I was.”

Sora chuckles and punches Vanitas in the arm. “Congrats! You finally have a boyfriend.”

Vanitas rubs his arm. It didn’t really hurt. He just wants to make Sora feel bad. “Shut up.”

Naminé, free to leave whenever the fuck she wants, stops in front of them as she emerges out of the bathroom. She’s back in normal clothes, her stuffy uniform folded into a neat stack in her hands. “I’m heading home. Goodnight, Vanitas. Goodnight, Sora.”

“Night!” Sora says happily.

“You got any plans for Sunday, Naminé?” Vanitas asks, stopping her from making a quick escape.

Naminé purses her lips, trying to hide a smile. “I’m going to the movies with Xion and Roxas.”

“Oh, man! Have fun!” Sora says happily.

“What he said,” Vanitas says, giving Sora a light shove. “I’ll see you Monday.”

Naminé nods. “See you then.”

* * *

Vanitas’s first date - ever - goes pretty well, all things considered. They’re not allowed to be in Ventus’s room with the door closed, but they settle for sprawling on Ventus’s massive bed together, with Ventus’s laptop carefully balanced between them.

Ventus’s dad comes by to check on them every five minutes, but it’s tolerable.

Ventus holds his hand for two whole episodes.

**Author's Note:**

> Marching band is.
> 
> Well.
> 
> It’s still whatever.
> 
> But, Vanitas supposes, after walking into the band room for marching practice and immediately getting tackled by Ventus’s hug-
> 
> -It could be worse.


End file.
